


asleep beneath my floor.

by ohyellowbird



Category: Actor RPF, Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Fluff, Freeform, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Timmy is a ghost, ghost au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-11-09 02:14:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17992910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohyellowbird/pseuds/ohyellowbird
Summary: Armie finally comes face to face with the ghost haunting his home.





	1. Chapter 1

He’d been scared at first, but mostly for his dicey mental health. Hearing an old house breathing at night and mistaking it for footsteps was one thing, easily attributed to the mundane. No, Armie was seeing flashes of a full-body apparition, gone too soon for him to ever be sure of what he’s seen but always leaving him with the same impression. Tall and dark-haired and with a melancholy curve to its frame.

Weeks and weeks of glimpses. In a second-story window, in the mirror, at the foot of his bed in the darkest hours before sunrise. Mirages of lost eyes and riotous curls, of long, slender fingers. 

His mind has spent hours straining to collage together all of the momentary sightings, but now that he’s really seeing for the first time, it’s clear that he’d never have been able to put together anything even remotely authentic to what is realized before him.

The ghost haunting Armie’s townhome is closer to a Schiele or a Mucha than anything he’s known of blood and flesh, or of the creeping, soulless ghouls he’s seen on screen. It has a face for marble or stone, young and angular, and lips redder than they have any right to be. Hands that were surely fluent in classical music during their lifetime, each digit narrow and tapered where they rest at its sides. 

A loose, striped sweater and fitted black jeans are incongruous to its ethereal features; the Mona Lisa photoshopped into a contemporary issue of Vogue. But they do add a visual warmth, round out the spirit into something idiosyncratic, far from the standard black suit or Victorian lace that is generally reserved for the visiting dead.

Armie is loathe to make any movement, still angled halfway in the hall, frozen on sight and clutching two dirty mugs from his bedside table that need to be washed. “Don’t be scared.”

“That’s my line,” it says, in a voice as clear as his own. 

The morning storm outside against the gauze of his white window drapes casts the living room in a sterile haze of grey. 

Armie eases the coffee-ringed mugs onto the floor by his feet, straightens back up empty-handed. “Can I come closer? Would that be alright?”

Contemplation passes over its brow, furrowed then smooth in the span of a second, as though such a request has been anticipated. “Okay.”

As Armie moves further into the room, static nips at his skin, at his dry knuckles and the back of his neck. His brain scrolls through a catalog of questions, but for the moment he is able to smother the urge to ask most of them; his eyes are hungrier than his curiosity. 

Closer up, he is able to feast on every detail that was previously fuzzy and nebulous. 

The yellow-green stare that watches him looking offers up nothing, open and framed by thick, black lashes. 

_Delicate_ is the word Armie settles on once he has gluttoned himself on the miracle standing next to his brown leather recliner. As elegant as fine china and, by appearance, as fragile. “You’re beautiful. What’s your name?”

“Timothée,” it-- _he_ says, the very edge of his mouth curled up like he may not mind the compliment. 

“Timothée,” Armie repeats fondly, holding the name in his mouth and butchering the accent.

The ghost’s smile stretches. “Close enough.”

He barks a laugh. “You’re funny. I like you.”

In an instant, Timothée’s smile flatlines. “You can’t, I’m not real,” he says plainly, knotting his hands into the long sleeves of his sweater.

The air heaves, thick all of a sudden, and Armie’s heart skips against his ribs like a rock over still water. “Please don’t go.” On instinct, he reaches out, claps a hand around Timothée’s shoulder. Only once he’s done it does he take a beat to marvel at the feeling, ordinary, substantial. Knitted wool with a firmness beneath it.

Timothée’s mouth parts in a silent gasp, eyes darting down to the place he’s been touched and then back up to Armie’s face. His chest rises and falls in a slow swell of movement.

‘You feel real,” Armie says without thinking, wanting Timothée to know. He squeezes gently to demonstrate and is met again with the convincing illusion of the corporeal.

A pale hand slips out of its striped sweater cuff then, wanders between them to press up into the center of his hoodie, skinny fingers bunching into the material. It feels cold, like the underside of a pillow. Armie’s heart punches out to greet it.

Timothée smiles, his gaze cast downward at his starfished hand.

The air around them crackles. 

Armie pulls at the neckline of Timothée’s sweater with his thumb, exposing the thin skin of his throat. He traces down the scooped collar, lost in reverence. Soft and textured and solid, nothing at all like the wispy specters of folklore.

He remembers himself and draws back, embarrassed, but the look on TImothée’s face is not one hardened by displeasure. It is soft. It bears a question.

“I feel real?” he asks in a quiet voice, and Armie can’t begin to understand the emotion his tone is soaked in. He can only nod seriously, say _‘yes’_ and put his hands on Timothée again. 

Armie fits a careful palm against his cheek, brushing over the high arched bone and around his socket. Eyelashes sweep over his nail with a silken kiss and Timothée closes his eyes, leaning into Armie’s warmth.

It’s a little bit heartbreaking, the way he nuzzles in, eyebrows bowing. His mouth falls open and Armie can’t resist. He draws over the shape of it.

“Can I try something?” Timothée asks, the seam of his mouth opening against Armie’s thumb.

“Yes,” Armie responds easily, wondering if he’s spellbound, and not caring. There isn’t a drop of fear present to poison the moment. There is a ghost in his house that walks and talks, and the singular worry currently capable of snaring him is that it might disappear at any time.

Timotheé’s hand releases the front of his shirt so that he can reach with both and curve them over the tops of Armie’s shoulders. His movements are cautious, but deliberate. Watching Armie with a compelling intensity, he very slowly eases up onto his toes to bring their faces closer together.

His kiss when it finally lands is a ghost in itself. It settles weightlessly against Armie’s lips for only a sliver of a second. There and gone. A micro-scale lightning storm.

Electricity licks through Armie, zinging all the way down through his fingers and toes, making his arm-hair stand on end. He shudders and cuffs a hand around the back of Timothée’s neck before he can pull back too far, searches his face for anything that says _stop_ before dipping back down to connect their mouths again.

Their second kiss is more human, it holds within it words and wants. Timothée fits Armie’s top lip between his own and kneads into the meat of his trapezius muscles, swells up into Armie’s space. He even sighs, sweetly, his useless breath huffing out as a chilly draft in between the shy, exploratory meeting and reunions of the kiss.

Armie’s eyes stay closed for a moment after they part. His every nerve is alight and his mouth feels tingly, almost numb--kind of like when he’d been dared to lick a 9-volt battery back in the sixth grade.

When Timothée disentangles himself, putting a cushion of air between them again, he is noticeably less fragile-looking. There is a pinkness to his cheeks that had been missing before. “Thank you,” he says with his eyes on the floor, looking up after, his hands twisting in against each other at his lap.

“You’re going, aren’t you?” Armie doesn’t mean for it to come out sounding as dejected as it does, but he is unhappy about it. He would spend the rest of his weekend home with Timothée if he could, learning him in every way that Timothée would allow. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m tired.”

“Will I, uh, I mean…” Armie doesn’t know how to phrase it, stumbles over the wording in his mind.

Timothée laughs then, a subdued, amused sort of sound that Armie will be thinking about for the rest of the day. He nods, shrugs, smiles. “Maybe. Bye Armie.”

“Bye, Tim--” Armie grins, quirks his head. “Hey, you know my name.”

Timothée makes an aborted _duh_ gesture with his hands before dropping them and nodding once more, another laugh in his voice. “I know your name, bye.”

And then, like that, he’s gone. His entire body goes dim, the opacity flickering, before he winks out of sight entirely.

The air loses its otherworldly charge. 

Armie stands alone once more in his living room, rubbing his lips together while the rain beats down against the window outside. Eventually, when a stretch of time has passed without activity, he leaves, retrieves his mugs from the hallway and heads to the kitchen as was his aim before finding Timothée waiting.

The rest of Armie’s weekend continues on from there as planned--food, gym, sleep, repeat--but unlike all of his weekends that came before, it feels loaded, as though at any moment a many-chaptered book, of which this morning was its prologue, will begin to unfold.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armie comes home after getting into a fight at the bar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello!!
> 
> this is not a proper multi-chaptered fic, but each vignette will be posted as a new chapter.

Armie stumbles through the house, headed straight for the bathroom. With a split brow and blood in his eye, he knocks into more than one door jamb before swinging a left and cranking on the sink.

His fingers smear blood over the chrome handle. Thick drops of it fall and dot the porcelain.

Everything throbs in time with his pulse.

He washes his hands. He spits and rinses, spits and rinses, and finally looks up to properly take stock of his appearance.

“ _Jesus, fuck!_ ” 

There is a white face in the mirror behind him. Terror trips through him with a limp, his reflexes damaged by the brawl from earlier. It grips and shakes him with slippery fingers and in turn, he grips the sink, eyes wide, heart rate screaming. 

But as fast as the fear has come on, it drains away, because he knows that face.

_Timothée._

Dragging in a full breath, he hastily swipes over his teeth with his tongue and spins. “Christ, man. A little warning next time.”

Timothée is stood in front of the tub wearing the same stripe sweater Armie remembers. His eyes are huge, with deep shadows hung like moons below them. His hands are rapidly eating up the ends of his sleeves. “You’re hurt.”

Armie barely registers that he’s spoken, overwhelmed by the fact that Timothée is _here_. It’s been weeks since their first conversation in the living room--he’d seen glimpses since, shadows and sound, but nothing concrete. He looks just as Armie remembers. Tall and bird-boned with that illustrative face. A ripe mouth with gently crooked teeth that stitch an ache into Armie’s side. Just gorgeous.

During his mental digression, Timothée has approached him, their feet now sharing the same tattered grey bath mat. Closer up, his expression is even more sharply unhappy. He reaches halfway between them, his hands flitting in front of Armie’s bloodied lips, his brow, his gruesomely stained white shirt. There is a clawing panic in his tone. “What happened? Armie, what happened?” 

Armie captures his wrists, squeezing, willing him calm. “Nothing--just a bar fight. I’m okay.”

“Okay?” Timothée balks, gesturing against his shackles at Armie’s _everything._ His eyes stray and stick where he’s being held, at Armie’s torn, swollen knuckles. His mouth falls open. 

“Where have you been?” Armie asks, hoping to breeze over his current state. He lets Timothée go. “I was starting to think I’d made you up.”

Amusement peeks out of Timothée’s distress, curling his mouth. He doesn’t answer. He just looks up at Armie again, gaze slipping over his injuries, smirk falling flatter the longer he looks. “Sit.”

Armie licks his lips, the urge to laugh or argue bubbling up, but before he has decided on which, Timothée is carefully manhandling him toward the closed toilet seat. “Timothée, what are you--stop. I’ll be fine. Really, you don’t have to…” 

Once he is seated, Timothée reaches for Armie, his hands fitting themselves against the edges of his jaw, exceedingly gentle. It feels incredible, the cold caress of Timothée’s palms against his hot, angry skin. Armie’s words wither and he allows Timothée to lift his face, to stare down into it with a heavy expression, weighted by an unknown that Armie yearns to reveal.

“Does it scare you?” he asks as he is meticulously checked over, his head being tilted this way and that in the poor overhead light of his bathroom, “The blood, I mean?”

Timothée’s eyes drift back to his own. They plead with him, dark green like lake water in the shade. “No,” he says eventually, shakes his head, “or. Yes--on you it does.” Then his icy touch is gone and he has turned his back on Armie’s curiosity to rummage beneath the sink.

 _What happened to you?_ Armie wants to ask, but it’s too far a leap. He holds his tongue and waits, simmers where he is seated while Timothée half-folds himself into the cabinet under the sink; his nerves are singed but singing from the fight, and from Timothée showing himself again.

“You look terrible,” Timothée says when he’s returned from his supply mission, staring at Armie’s sore mouth. He’s holding a wet washcloth, some rubbing alcohol, and has a rogue q-tip twisted into his hair.

“Gee, thanks.” Subconsciously, Armie tongues the spot where his lip has split, tasting pennies. “C’mere.”

Timothée rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean,” he sighs, stepping up in front of Armie’s knees before bowing forward and letting Armie extract the q-tip.

The first touch of the damp cloth to Armie’s brow is hesitant. Timothée blots over the sticky gash with a pained look pulling his face, the fingertips of his spare hand curled underneath Armie’s chin to keep him still. 

“I’m not going to break,” Armie assures him when minutes have passed and he hasn’t moved on from that first spot, demonstrates by covering Timothée’s hand with his own and pressing down. “See?”

Timothée’s gaze cuts over and he tries to yank his hand back, but when he finds Armie grinning, a little of the tension leaks out of his frame. He mimics his smile with a more brittle version, shaking off Armie’s touch to continue cleaning the area. “Close your eyes.”

The cloth sweeps over his socket first, scrubbing at a thin trail of crusted blood. Then it drags lower, down his cheek to his mouth, his chin. Armie hisses as a rough edge snags, and opens his eyes to find Timothée gaping at him like he’s just committed murder. He rushes to nullify that look. “God, no no. Not your fault. Just tender.”

“I’m sorry,” Timothée grimaces, suddenly three steps away, and Armie has to swallow down a lump of fear that he’s just scared him off. The days since their first meeting have passed in a bland, monochrome blur of waiting and he is not ready to say goodbye to the dazzling technicolor that Timothée has manifested with his arrival.

“Not your fault,” he says again, and opens his knees a little wider, beckoning Timothée back over to him, making room and his want known. He grabs for the bottle of rubbing alcohol to his right and twists off the cap, steadying Timothée’s hand holding the rag to coat it once he’s come close enough, positioned again between Armie’s legs. “We’re not even to the good part yet.”

“God, Armie. This is going to sting so bad.”

“I know, I know. It’s okay.”

It does. It hurts like a motherfucker. His brow, where Timothée starts, with big eyes and a worried, twisted mouth, and worse at the seam of his lips. But Armie conceals the bulk of the smarting pain, only inhaling sharply through his nose once or twice, when it can’t be helped. 

Midway through, when most of the dried blood is gone and his face is no longer oozing, Timothée trades the soiled cloth for thick wads of toilet paper, tipping out tiny portions of antiseptic and painstakingly dabbing over each cut. He pulls out Armie’s lip, dipping two fingertips into his mouth to pinch at where the split is deepest with a clean square of tissue.

“Thank you,” Armie says once Timothée has retreated again to the sink, the medicine cabinet open and casting his reflection at a strange angle towards the wall. Having Timothée care for him wasn’t on the menu for this disaster of a night, but he would gladly have seconds and thirds of it, would get himself into trouble every night if it meant that this sublime, enigmatic creature would reveal himself and play nurse when he got back home.

“Thank _you,_ ” Timothée parrots, plucking out white boxes with varying bandage sizes from behind an assortment of over-the-counter pill bottles. “For last time, for not freaking out when you saw me, and for letting me, you know. Kiss you.”

Armie grins even though it hurts. “Guess we’re even then.”

Back in front of him again, Timothée peels a small butterfly band-aid for Armie’s brow. “I’m serious, thank you. You don’t know how long it’s been since I, like, talked to anyone, or felt anything. I didn’t know I even could still. I thought I was…” 

Armie can’t help himself. He reaches out and closes his hands around Timothée’s slender waist. “You’re not.” He squeezes, jostling him gently. “Hey. Whatever you’re afraid of, you’re not. I see you, I feel you. At night, sometimes I can even hear you.”

“Doing what?” Timothée asks dolefully, fitting the bandage above Armie’s eye before letting his hands fall to his shoulders. 

“Talking sometimes, or humming. I’m not sure, but I like it. It means that you’re around--I wish you’d let me see you more.” 

Timothée sniffs, but when Armie looks for tears, he doesn’t appear to be crying. “Sorry, I’m tired a lot.”

Armie smiles, molding his hands to Timothée’s hips, feeling out his skinny frame beneath the bulk of his sweater. “That’s okay. Are you tired now?”

“A little,” Timothée nods, but he still looks solid, still feels like a living boy. Chewing his cheek, he shifts his cool palms up against the sides of Armie’s throat, draws over the border of his unculled stubble.

Armie closes his eyes, melting a little. “That feels nice.”

Timothée touches his finger to a spot just below Armie’s mouth, where a deep bruise is forming. “I wish I could kiss you again.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm, but your lip is busted. Tell me what happened.”

Heat knots into Armie’s chest and he opens his eyes, more focused on Timothée’s lopsided cupid’s bow than on recounting the incident. “Some fucker on the stool next to me was relentlessly hitting on this, uh, this woman. She was obviously uncomfortable so--when I suggested that he give it a rest, well, he didn’t love that...”

“Wow,” Timothée says, his face hovering inches away by the time Armie is finished talking. “That was super cool of you, dude sounds like a total dick.”

Armie’s hands smoothe under the loose hem of Timothée’s sweater and up his back as his spine curves. His voice is pulled low by their waxing proximity and the clot of lust growing in his ribcage. “Timothée…”

“Call me Timmy,..” Timothée breathes, his thumbs underneath Armie’s jaw, tipping his face upwards as his own descends.

Their lips connect, but it doesn’t sting. It doesn’t even really feel like a kiss if he’s honest. More like the snippy fuzz of electricity against Armie’s mouth. And come to think of it, that’s what Timothée feels like under his hands too, not quite stable, an old light bulb fighting to stay on. 

“Don’t wanna hurt you,” Timmy whispers before Armie can ask what’s happening. And then their gossamer kiss is over and Timmy's lips are on his unmarred cheek, solid again. 

Armie’s hand ducks out of Timmy’s sweater then, moves to wrap around the back of his neck but Timmy's weaves, stepping out of the space between his legs with it held in his delicate fingers. His eyes are happy and hooded when he brings it up to his mouth and drops ice-cold kisses against each of Armie’s knobby, tattered knuckles. “No more fights,” he appeals, cupping Armie’s heavy palm against his cheek.”Okay?”

“I’ll do my best,” Armie offers, spinning, tangled in his blooming desire and the terrible notion that Timmy is about to leave. They haven’t had enough time. It was all wasted on his stupid face; there was so much he wanted to say, to ask. _When will he be back?_ A wave of dread rises, threatens to pull him under, but Armie negotiates it silently, saying only, “Don’t stay away so long.”

Timmy’s pink mouth slides open into a crooked, toothy smile. He nuzzles his face into Armie’s palm while watching him, surveying his handiwork--every cut cleaned and those that can be, dressed, all of the blood washed away. “I’ll do my best.”

And then, again, he’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> i am still ohhyellowbird on tumblr and i love you.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armie is woken in the middle of the night by the sound of crying.

Armie is sucked from sleep, snaps awake with a violent jerk.

His eyes adjust to the blackness, seeing nothing and then squiggles and then shapes. 

Slowly, the world fills in.

Something is making noise. It sounds like...crying. A bird or a leaky faucet. And it’s close, maybe even in the room with him.

Armie flops out a numb arm to confirm that the other side of the bed is empty. 

His brain is a slush of sleepiness. Thoughts roll by. Tumbleweeds in a windstorm.

Until one pricks him.

“Timmy?”

Silence followed by a muffled, “ _fuck!_ ” Then a feeling like a suck of energy, and more silence.

_Timmy._

Armie whips off the comforter, steps into a black puddle of underwear from the night before and strides purposefully out of his room toward the sound.

“Timmy? Is that you?”

Nothing. 

“Are you okay?”

By the time he descends the stairs, his fading drowsiness has refined itself into worry. His voice hardens. “Timmy, where are you? I heard you.”

Everything looks human-shaped. Grandfather clock. Coat rack. One of his suit bags hung over the railing. He scans over them all, searching.

“Come on, Timmy. Please.”

Feeling his way across the front room, Armie stubs his toe on a tapered coffee table leg. 

“ _Holy-God-fucking-dammit!_ ” 

Hopping with one hand clamped around his foot, the air around him gapes, breathes, turns his skin to gooseflesh.

“Sorry,” comes a voice from behind, flat and sad.

Armie drops his foot, pain forgotten, and turns. Timmy is standing on the other side of the coffee table, blue-cast in the dark. 

His voice sounds thick, and wet, and he looks _wrong._ He has the same wild hair and the same sweater, is still tall and rawboned, but everything appears out of focus. Or pixelated, the grainy picture on an old tube television. 

A biting, primal fear that Armie hasn’t felt before seizes him, his limbic cortex begging him to run. And he does, but not away. He rushes Timmy where he’s standing, his pressing desire to help overpowering the instinct to flee. 

When he reaches him, his first grab misses, sifts right through Timmy’s shoulders, like Armie has lunged into smoke. 

“Don’t be sorry, you haven’t done anything to be sorry for. What’s wrong?” 

“Nothing, it’s nothing,” Timmy heaves, shrinking back. “I’m sorry, go back to bed. I’m fine, I’m fine.”

Armie grabs for him again and finds purchase, reeling Timmy in against his bare chest without a spare thought for what he could do, like this. If he could be dangerous.

Timmy is freezing to the touch, and strange-feeling. Static and with a slightly intangible texture that quivers between solid and sparse, but begins to level out the longer Armie holds him.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Armie says against his body’s screaming intuition. His fingers have found long, ragged tears in the back of Timmy’s sweater that he would have remembered being there. The skin between them feels slick.

Timmy turns his cheek against Armie’s neck, looking out toward his shoulder. “I didn’t know where I was...I just--can you feel me?” he asks in a thin whisper, his hands clutching at the backs of Armie’s ribs.

“Yes,” Armie says soberly. “You’re right here, you’re real.”

Timmy lets out a sob. “Are you sure?”

Armie slides a fist into Timmy’s hair so that he can ease back his face until they are looking at one another through the freckled, hazy black of the living room. “Yes,” he promises, flexing his hand in Timmy’s curls, making him wince, wanting him to feel something other than this unfathomable hurt he carries.

Timmy’s chest is cutting in and out against his own as they stand together in the dark, and his crying is eerie. The sound of it seems to move throughout the room, muffled right against Armie’s shoulder and then faraway in the next moment, near the windows or by the front door, or smothered against Armie’s opposite ear.

“What can I do?” Armie asks, cradling the back of Timmy’s head, scrubbing his fingertips soothingly over his hair. “I want to help.”

He has no idea what’s happening but it feels like whatever tethers Timmy to the mortal coil is frayed tonight. And Armie can’t simply stand by watching as he unravels. He is desperate to help, and yet so entirely out of his depth. There are few things he knows less about than re-establishing the dead in the world of the living. And that’s what he wants to do, anchor Timothée back in this world, or, even though the thought of doing so hollows him out, find a way so that he can go. Move on to the next.

“Just. I don’t know, um,” Timmy chokes out, sawing breath between sobs, “Say something. Talk. What day is it? Where are we?”

Distraction. That he can do. 

Armie slips a hand in through the jagged gaps in the back of Timmy’s sweater, begins rubbing firm, sweeping circles into his skin. A figure skater and a frozen pond. 

“It’s Tuesday night, or Wednesday morning, and we’re in my apartment,” Armie says, speaking gently, jaw shifting against Timmy’s crown, “I had a gym-and-dinner date with my friend, Nick, but had to cancel--work’s been insane. Back to back to back meetings; there aren’t enough hours in the day. You know, I hate March, it’s such a bullshit in-between month. The weather can’t make up it’s fucking mind. Warm. Cold. Rainy, Hot. I think there’s something wrong with the furnace. I need to call my landlord.”

He rambles on, bouncing from topic to topic, and slowly, Timmy seems to sag against him, his face turning inward to tuck itself into against crook of Armie’s neck, wet and cold. His breathing calms from craggy mountains and trenches into softer swells of unease.

“I’m still writing 2018 sometimes when I sign shit, even though it’s been 2019 for almost three months. Do you remember, in school, how many times you’d have to scratch out the date on assignments after New Year’s? When it gets warm I can start leaving my car home. I’ll need to get a new tire for my bike.” 

Timmy quakes, his spine curling. He makes a face against Armie’s throat and collapses back into a fevered state.

The hyperventilating starts again and Armie can only shelter him in their embrace and silently deconstruct whatever he’d said for any trigger that may have tipped Timmy back into hysterics.

“Could you just…” Timmy sighs eventually, his words soggy and raw. His eyes are even more so, peeling open when he unfurls partway from Armie’s chest to stare sadly.

He never finishes voicing his request, instead letting his gaze hook into Armie’s mouth and pushing onto his toes, eating away at their difference in height.

 _Now? Are you sure?_ Armie thinks, but what he says, with hands resettling at Timmy’s hips is, “yeah,” and then they’re kissing.

Timmy moans into it, dragging himself up Armie’s body, elbows hooking over his shoulders, arms cinching and locking behind his neck.

It isn’t like past affection. It’s frenetic and needy, Timmy breaking against him, breathing messily, opening their kiss and slipping his tongue inside. “Don’t let me go,” he pleads, and Armie feeds back the promise not to, urging him up, up. 

When Timmy’s legs are around his waist, Armie turns them, takes a few steps and presses him into the nearest wall with a hand splayed over his uncovered lower back. Timmy makes a feral sound and hugs Armie’s hips tighter with his thighs.

He weighs next to nothing. Armie brushes back his curls for better access to his mouth and they move more like he’s underwater than standing here in the living room, floating back into place when Armie’s hand cuffs under his ear.

He feels solid, but otherwise unreal. Too cold and too light and too charged. 

He is trying to keep his head above water, but Timmy is set on drowning them both with the way he clings, not letting Armie up for air, every movement infused with desperation.

He is hard because _of course he is_. A beautiful boy has unzipped himself against Armie, Armie wearing nothing but yesterday’s underwear. Armie, whose head and dreams have been full of Timmy since they met. Fondness and questions and _want_ for the ghost haunting his home--he’s spent days of time imagining them painted in such a picture together.

Everywhere they’re touching is a fire hazard. Timmy’s mouth against his mouth, his cheek, his jaw leaves an invisible trail of sparks. 

Armie’s pelvis eases forward seeking relief and Timmy’s fingers turn to claws at his back. They score down rows of long, hot marks, piercing him. “Armie…”

“Timothée,” Armie pants. The tones of voices are twins, airy and drawn. He kisses the top line of Timmy’s shoulder, teeth sinking into the stretched neckline of his sweater when it gets in his way. “I’m right here. I’ve got you.”

Timmy lets out a shuddering gust of air, head tipped heavenward. His voice is a dizzy smile. “I know.”

He drops his legs and sets his hands against Armie’s chest, coaxing him backward with a bargaining pressure, lips mapping out the breadth of his throat.

Armie folds down into the couch once he feels his calves bump into the cushions. Timmy follows after, pouring himself over Armie, stripping out of his sweater on the way. It leaves his hand but never hits the floor.

“Are you sure--” Armie starts, needing to check in, but Timmy extinguishes the question and most of the worry with his mouth and with his full weight driving downward. 

It’s better than most of the fucks he’s been sober enough to remember, sitting on the couch with a dead boy writhing in his lap, layers between them. Armie thinks fleetingly that Timmy’s ministrations may be rending apart his atoms, that’s how good it feels, how different. His blood feels carbonated. His skin is fizzing.

But then one cold hand slowly begins descending Armie’s ribs while they’re kissing and grinding together. When it reaches Armie’s waistband he reroutes it, plants it instead on Timmy’s own thigh.

For tonight, this is the line. 

“What’s wrong?” Timmy asks, breathless. He leans back, looking at Armie with eyelids at half-mast and a face red with razor burn. His chest is perfect porcelain in the low light from the moon through the window. It rises and falls and Armie watches it, mesmerized. Art imitating life.

“Nothing,” he exhales fondly, hands spanning Timmy’s waist, sweeping up and down. “Let’s save that though, okay?”

Timmy looks abashed but nods.

“When you’re feeling better.”

“Yeah.” He wiggles his hips, grinning at the resulting groan that bleeds out of Armie, clearly pleased. He peels Armie’s hands off of his torso to fiddle with them, turning them over, inspecting his palm lines.

The grandfather clock down the hall _chimes, chimes, chimes chimes_.

“Can we talk about what happened?

Timmy’s eyes jump up to meet Armie’s. “What happened…” he repeats slowly, chewing into his lower lip, expression wilting.

Armie’s brow knits together before the light bulb comes on. He barks out a laugh and lifts Timmy’s hand to his lips, kisses the soft pad of his thumb. “Not the making out, dummy--the other thing. The crying. I want to know what upset you.”

“Oh.” Timmy relaxes, lets down his shoulders. He serves Armie a small smile and then moves off of his lap, flops onto the other side of the couch and drapes his legs over Armie’s middle.

Armie’s skin is still buzzing from being a two-headed tangle moments ago. He presses the heel of his hand into his stubborn erection and shifts toward Timmy, all ears, sets one hand against Timmy’s knee and curls the other over his hip. He waits for Timmy to talk, fully accepting that he might not be ready tonight, or ever.

Timmy shrugs, stares into the ceiling, his voice steady and soft when it spills into the silence. “It just happens sometimes,” he sighs. “Part of me gets, mm, lost I guess. Like, I forget things and what makes me me starts to fade away. I won’t be able to remember who I am, or where, or what--what, uh, happened. It’s almost like an anxiety attack, that’s the best way I can describe it. Once I realize that I’m forgetting things, it can snowball. And it can take a long time for me to come back down, I dunno. Sorry. That probably doesn’t make any sense.”

The terror and anguish that accompanies these episodes must be unbearable. Armie tries to speak, but finds that he has to clear his throat first, emotion drying it out. “That sounds really scary,” He reaches for Timmy’s hand, picking it up off his belly to warm between his own. 

Timmy threads his fingers with Armie’s, eyes downcast. His jaw clenches. “Yeah.”

“I want to help. What can I do?”

“I dunno, please don’t worry about me.” He sucks in his lower lip. His tone darkens. “I shouldn’t even be here.”

“Stop.” Armie squeezes his hand. “I can...start subscribing to the newspaper? It might help you keep ahold of time. And you can watch the tv whenever you want. Do you like music? There’s a Spotify app on there. I’ll show you how to use it sometime.”

Timmy shifts, dragging Armie’s hands up to cover his face. “Why are you so nice to me?” he asks in a voice reserved for holding back tears.

And that breaks Armie’s heart, that common decency looks like valor to Timmy after spending so much time alone. _How much?_ he wonders, but defers the question in favor of leaning down, Timmy’s legs parting around his waist, to unearth his face and kiss him.

It’s a brief brushing of their mouths because after only a second of contact, Timmy is gone and Armie is alone. 

He falls forward, catching himself with his forearms.. 

“Guess you wore me out,” Timmy says somewhere to his right.

Armie is still recovering from the suddenness of his disappearance but automatically turns, a heliotropic flower drawn toward the sun.

Timmy is back, kind of. He is standing next to the Eames lounge by the television but it’s as though a light has shut off inside of him, reducing him to a black, impenetrable silhouette. No green, no pale, no stripes. Just black against black in the dark.

Armie plays off his reactive shiver as a tick, pushing down the primal directive to run that crescendos again. It’s fucking creepy, there’s no doubt about it. But the spindly, matte figure watching him was just underneath him a minute earlier.

It’s still Timmy, and so Armie smiles, relaxing. “Apparently. Are you feeling better now?”

“Yes, Armie. So much better, thank you. I guess i should, or I think. I better go.”

Armie yawns, the late hour finally hitting him. He wants a proper goodbye--something tactile that will cement the notion that Timmy is going to be alright--but doesn’t advance, weary to tire him out any more than tonight already has. “Okay. Goodnight, Timmy. See you soon?”

The shadow nods. “Yes. Bye, Armie.”

-

The next morning, when Armie comes downstairs to put on a pot of coffee before work, Timmy is curled up on the couch, looking ruffled and cozy, and ordinary.

“Oh, hi.”

Timmy’s face is half hidden in his sweater. He reveals it and smiles, pulling back his sleeves. “Morning.”

“You’re here.” The surprise in Armie’s voice is tempered by how little sleep he’s had. 

“Yup. The neighbor next door took a really long shower and running water, um. It helps, sometimes.”

Armie files that information away and drifts into the living room, routine put on pause. He sits next to Timmy on the couch with a cushion between them. “Interesting.”

Timmy appraises their distance so Armie shifts, moves closer. His bent knee bumps against Timmy’s outer thigh and it feels normal. 

They sit for a minute, Armie in a daze with heavy eyelids. Then he shakes himself and leans forward, swipes the remote from the coffee table and pops on the television. He holds it out in his palm, instructing Timmy on the various features: cable, blu-ray player, streaming apps. 

He catches on easily, clearly familiar with this generation of technology, taking the remote from Armie when it’s offered and showing that he can navigate through the smart menu. “Thank you,” he says quietly, looking over. His eyes are soft and his mouth looks open with more to say, but he seals it into a smile.

Armie’s chest thumps, affection flooding in. “Don’t mention it,” he says, and lifts an arm. Timmy immediately ducks underneath it, snuggling in tightly against Armie’s side, lolling his head into the pressed white collar of his work shirt.

They watch twenty minutes of the news. Timmy likes the weather girl’s dress. He imitates her sweeping gestures against the green screen.

Armie arrives late to work, uncaffeinated, and falls asleep at his desk. Twice.

It’s the first good day of March.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> i may add more to this au, so don't worry much about the chapters saying 3/3.


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